So, don't be too impressed at how I know that the noise level of an average firecracker reaches 130 decibels at five or six yards. By comparison, that's the equivalent of an airliner taking off from fifty feet away.

A loud one.

As for a string of fireworks outside San Francisco's Portsmouth Square on Lunar New Year?

"I go, they follow," said Jang, who retired, recently from the San Francisco Sheriff's Department.

"Are there backseat drivers in a dragon?"

"Oh, sure."

"What do they say?"

"Go slower."

Such are typical conversations when celebrating the first Year of The Dog since 2006. That long string of fireworks put an end to all of them, once former Mayor Willie Brown officiated the lighting. He's a veteran of this event.

"What you do is have a partner and let him light the damn thing and then take off when lighting it," he joked.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin said an old San Francisco law allowing fireworks for the holiday has been on the books for decades.